


the woods are lovely, dark and deep

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Bodyswap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 03:50:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6179092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carra wakes up in Gary's body. He doesn't have a wank.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the woods are lovely, dark and deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neyvenger (jjjat3am)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/gifts).



> dearest Julija,   
> i love u lots. thanks a million for starting this exchange and you deserve so much more than this, but i hope u enjoy it anyway.

Jamie sees him once after the seven nil loss to Barcelona. Gary's coming out of the hotel with his travel bag, face pallid under the florescent lighting, just as Jamie was about to go in. Their eyes met, but they didn't look away immediately and the moment dragged on for a long, stuttering second. Jamie thought about saying something – _I'm sorry_ , or _Tough luck_ – but instead he opened his mouth and Gary was past him. Jamie doesn't quite turn his head to watch him go, but he goes back into the revolving doors of the hotel in a daze, the air conditioning gently buffeting him awake from that hot sullen despairing look in Gary Neville's eyes.

 

 

-

 

 

The flight back to England was too warm. The air's stuffy in the airplane cabin, and even the ice in his drink seemed to melt faster than normal. Jamie thinks longingly of the cold clouds outside, grey skies and rain lashing down and the stormy channel a thousand miles underneath. He tries not to think about Neville, but it doesn't last very long.

Jamie sighs and takes a long drink. Everything was so much more- so much more _awkward_ now. Instead of enjoying MSN's brilliant football he's got this niggling unease in the back of his head, some semi-stern admonishing voice that almost has a Mancunian accent on a permanent monologue of despair. Gary fucking Neville. Jamie stuffs the standard tiny airplane pillow behind his head and tries to fall asleep for a bit, but the voice doesn't quieten down.

He closes his eyes and sees only Gary's eyes, deep and sunken in hollows carved out from lack of sleep. He wonders if Gary gets up before the sunrise – knows he does, actually- wonders if he spent ages at the kitchen table – Phil's probably- drawing up battle plans, wonders if he practices Spanish to the bathroom mirror, serious faced. Wonders if he allowed himself a smile in the morning before the match, just for luck.

Jamie stares at the stars twinkling out from the airplane ceiling, that uneasy tenderness in his chest refusing to fade, not knowing what to do because, well. There's not a single thing he could do about it.

 

-

 

He wakes up with the sunlight shining straight into his face. The curtains weren't pulled shut, and Jamie entertains a brief moment of annoyance before rolling over and getting out of bed. It feels early still, and he's got a massive hangoveresque headache that throbbed at his temples even though he couldn't remember being drunk the night before. He staggers, blearily, out the door, turning a right for the bathroom, and bumps into the wall.

The wall. Not a bathroom.

“What?” Jamie says out loud, feeling stupid. He looks around, and then the realization hits like a cold glass of water poured down his back. This wasn't his house.

The urge to take a piss intensified along with the confusion, so he gingerly steps down the hallway, looking around for anyone else that seemed to be home, until he gets to a bathroom.

Jamie's thoughts go a hundred miles an hour, but the mystery stayed that way. He couldn't remember anything past falling asleep on the plane. He might've had a few drinks, gone home with someone else, but that didn't make sense. If that was how last night unfolded, he should be able to remember _something._

Frowning, Jamie steps to the sink and glances up at the mirror. He freezes. Then he opens his mouth for a minute, but no sound comes out.

He puts his hand up the glass, and so does his reflection.

“Gary Neville?” his reflection asks in a tone of dreamy horror, and Jamie screams and throws a bar of soap at the glass. It shatters like a spiderweb, but that still didn't erase the reality of thousands of reflected images of himself in the mirror shards, or the fact that those images were not of him, Jamie Carragher, at all, but instead-

Gary. Neville.

 

-

 

 

“Say it again?” Steven says slowly. Jamie sighs. Steven had answered the phone stiffly, with a “Hello?” which Carra had replied with “Stevie.” and Stevie's subsequent followup (“Gary Nev?”) had made him almost drop the receiver.

“I think I'm in Gary's body.”

Steven's quiet for a moment, which Jamie allowed for all of five seconds. “Stevie?”

“Carra,” Steven says, and Jamie realises with some horror that Steven was trying to smother a laugh. “I'm sorry! I'm sorry. If you're Carra at all. Are you sure this isn't a prank you're both pulling on me?”

“It's not.” Jamie says shortly. It's one thing to be stuck in a terrible situation, but it's another when your best mate doesn't believe you are and is trying hard not to laugh at you.

“I don't know what to say mate,” Steven says. Jamie can see him scratching his head. “Just stick it out?”

Jamie sighs.

“Have you talked to him yet?” Steven adds, like it had just occurred to him.

 

 

-

 

Gary doesn't pick up on the first try. Or the second. Jamie's getting used to the droning dial tone that's setting his teeth on edge when there's a click and-

“Hey.”

It's strange hearing your own voice no matter what the context. Jamie's heard it plenty of times before, since being in the television business tends to mean a lot of re-watching recordings. But now that voice was on the line, and it's unnerving.

“Gary?” he says.

There's an agonizing pause. Jamie wonders if that's Gary going through the same thing that he'd just gone through, and wished desperately to wake up from whatever the hell this was.

“Yeah,” Gary says, and immediately: “Oh God, this is a nightmare. I'm mumbling in Scouse.”

Jamie laughs. He couldn't help himself.

“Fuck you too, Neville,” he says, practically cheerfully. And then clear as a bell the thought comes to him and he pitches his voice slightly lower, more seriously.

“Neville?”

“What?”

And Jamie says in Gary Neville's Mancunian accent, “Liverpool is the best football club in the world.”

 

-

 

The phone's getting warm in his hand but Jamie still hasn't hung up. After Gary's outraged silence he'd retaliated immediately and they'd spend the last hour or so saying more and more outrageous things in each other's voices.

“What are you going to do?” Gary says.

“I texted Phil,” Jamie says, settling down on the couch. Gary's still got unpacked boxes stacked in a corner of his living room. “You're sick and not feeling well enough to do interviews.”

Gary's quiet. “They're going to think I'm avoiding the media because of Barcelona.”

Jamie winces. “I hadn't thought of that. If you want I could do the press conf-”

“No.” Gary says sharply.

Jamie watches the dust motes dance in the sunlight. Everything still hideously awry despite the ridiculous situation they've found themselves in. He keeps quiet till Gary speaks.

“It's mine to bear,” Gary says finally. “I don't want you to- I don't want you to speak for me. It's cheating.”

“Alright,” Jamie says. “What are you going to do?”

Gary sighs, then laughs, as though he was surprised. “Go to the studio.”

 

 

-

 

He makes Gary text him updates from his day, although it was rather agonizing watching himself on television. There's a few moments when there's something unsettlingly wrong about the way Jamie Carragher on screen's moving and speaking and the expressions he made sometimes, but all in all Gary does a decent job of passing for him. Not that it was hard, really. He could've done the same for Gary. He didn't know what that meant, and tries to not think about it too hard.

_Did Ed suspect?_ He types, idly, after the program was over. The reply came almost immediately.

_Not a thing. This can't go on forever though, you're too fucking tall._

Jamie sniggers, thinking of Gary tripping over himself and bumping into things, unused to his new dimensions.

All he'd done was laze around the house all day, avoiding Phil's calls. But now he stands up and wonders over to the nearest full length mirror and looks at himself. At Gary.

He'd woken up in a soft t shirt and boxers and stayed like that through the whole day, not seeing the point of getting dressed to stay indoors. The man in the mirror looks back at him in careful scrutiny, the tiny line between his eyebrows deepening. Jamie reaches out a hand and traces the curve of his reflection's jaw gently, cold glass under his fingertips.

 

 

-

 

 

“So,” Gary says. “That was a long day.”

Jamie laughs. “Eh? What'd you do?”

“Nothing really, apart from the studio. Then I went to the pub across the street, you remember? We'd get lunch from there sometimes.”

“You get the same as usual?” Jamie asks.

“Yeah. My usual. You haven't been there for a while, apparently. Ted's going to think you're pining over me now.” Gary's voice was unbearably smug. Jamie groans at the very thought of it.

“Nothing's changed much,” Gary says.

“Only been a couple months.” Gary doesn't answer, so Jamie carries on, “you should come back then. If you miss it so much.”

They're both silent for a while.

“What do we do about this?” Gary says finally.

“I don't think it'll last.”

“Why'd you think it happened?” Gary asks, more to himself than expecting an answer from Jamie. But something compelled Jamie to say it out loud anyway, a curious separation from his thoughts to his voice because he's saying it in Gary's.

“I wished I was there, y'know. Instead of you.”

Gary breathes in sharply. “Why'd you do that?”

Jamie doesn't say anything. There doesn't seem to be anything he could say, possibly because he'd already said far too much.

 

-

 

 

Gary wakes up to soft sunlight filtering through the curtains. He gets up, yawning, and staggers out of the room, turns left and ends up in the bathroom. He only comes fully awake staring at the cracked glass of his mirror.

There's a note taped across it. He stares at it, for a long while, thinking of what's to come today, and the matches in the weekend. Matches that must be won.

_You can do it._ He takes it off the mirror, and turns it over when he glimpses something on the other side.

_Or I'll see you back at Sky._

Gary laughs, shaking his head. It's one of those things, he supposes. When you've come too far to continue your pretensions, so you might as well stick it out. For better or worse.

 

“A lot of faith in me, Carragher,” he says into the phone. Jamie laughs on the other end, and it was a relief to hear that familiar laugh not coming from his own mouth.

“You bet, Neville.”

“I'll bet,” Gary says, and pulls the curtain open to let the sun splash on his face.

 

 

 

 

 

_"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,_

_But I have promises to keep,_

_And miles to go before I sleep,_

_And miles to go before I sleep."_

 

 

 


End file.
